itch.io: a one-man open game storefront, bootstrapped to a million games and profits

itch.io hosts and sells indie games, game assets, comics, and other digital creations; developers upload for free and keep most of every sale, with a default 10% platform cut.

An open marketplace where developers set their own commission and buyers pay what they want can profitably serve the indie creators Steam ignores.

Self-funded from Leaf Corcoran's salary as a Scribd software engineer; he ran the site part-time and personally covered hosting and bandwidth costs.

After Valve's Steam Greenlight added a $100 submission fee in 2012, Corcoran — a software engineer and hobbyist game maker — spent about three months building a site where anyone could upload a game through a simple form. He launched itch.io on March 3, 2013, taking a 10% fee for hosting.

Growth came without funding or a sales team: by June 2015 itch.io had paid developers $393,000, with a best month of $51,489, and the founder said the platform had a net profit; the team was just three people. In 2015 itch.io let developers set their own revenue share below the default 10%, and by 2017 the average commission had fallen to about 8%.

Still independent and running as of September 2026: over a million projects hosted, no venture funding, and the default home for the indie and game-jam scene.

Corcoran inverted the storefront model: instead of competing for the same AAA customers as Steam, he served hobbyists and jam developers who had no other way to sell.

Creator-set commissions (0–10%) turned the fee itself into a feature, making developers feel the platform was on their side.

No venture funding meant the business only had to cover hosting costs and a small salary, so it could grow slowly and profitably.

Early press and the indie community gave itch.io credibility that paid storefronts could not buy.

Give the smallest creators what the biggest store refuses: zero barriers and control over their own economics. Profit comes from being infrastructure for a community, not from squeezing it.

As of September 2026 itch.io still operates independently under Corcoran with no VC funding and well over one million hosted projects. It remains the standard distribution point for game jams and experimental indie games, roughly ten times Steam's catalog count. The platform has stayed profitable on creator-set commissions and hosting costs, and its 2020 charity bundle — 1,700+ games, 810,000+ purchases, $8.1M raised in ten days — remains one of the largest single community events in indie gaming.